I was on a roll for a couple months, doing more woodworking than I had in a while. Then the end of April I accepted a new job at Penguin Computing and I have done no woodworking since. That is temporary though. I’m confident that once I get up to speed on the new gig I’ll have more time at home than before. I’m not there yet though.

There is one exception of woodworking I’ve done recently. That was that I was able to attend Handworks #3. I travelled down with the Naked Woodworker and his crew, and helped him set up his booth. The project Mike was doing in his booth continued with his aim to help people do less wood-watching and more woodworking. He provided the materials and tools needed, as well as coaching, to help people build their own Moxon vise. It was a hit, and he ran out of materials early the second day.

Roy Underhill again gave the keynote performance, and here’s a very good video of that.

Veritas large shoulder plane on the work piece which is on my shooting board

I’ve resumed working on my Roubo workbench, which means timber frame-sized mortise and tenons. I recently sold my rabbet block plane. I bought it hoping it would do double duty as both a block plane and a shoulder plane. It was a good block plane but I didn’t like it at all as a rabbet/shoulder plane. While working a tenon like in this photo, for example, the low profile makes the plane too hard to hold. The tall shoulder plane works great in my hands. This plane is on loan from a friend.

My 14″ band saw threw the lower tire the other day. The tire balled up in the lower corner and jammed up the whole works bringing the motor to a stop. I’ve thought about replacing the 3/4 hp motor with a more powerful one and I wonder what would have happened with the ball of old hard rubber had the motor not given up so easily. Would it have been rammed up toward the table? And what would have had to give way to make a path?

I’ve never been able to get this saw to track well. The riser block on it is silly given the poor tracking and lack of power. Would more power fix all on this? I’m inclined to take the riser off. More to come …

I got back to a little woodworking last week. I built a bookcase from Lost Art Press’s Anarchist’s Design Book (ADB) to go into my son’s dorm room. It took a fairly big mental hurtle to convert my shop from bathroom-remodeling mode to woodworking mode, which was a good thing. Because of the tight timeline, I used 1×12 pine from the home center. That wood is terrible. It appears that even the “premium” quality boards are poorly dried. Out of about twelve boards all but two cupped just a day or two after I brought them home. That put me on the slippery slope which led to power sanding, and then purchasing Bench Cookies (ew). I used the two boards that stayed flat for the sides, and ended up using cupped boards for the shelves. That seemed to be ok since the shelves are housed in 1/4-deep dadoes.

I was happy with how the shelves turned out. I finished the outside of the sides with two coats of General Finishes milk paint (black over red). Given more time, it could have used one more coat of paint, and some BLO or wax over that. I would have also liked to wax the shelves, or even burnish them. I was asked if I could make more of them to stay in the house, which is a good sign.

These felt really sturdy. After just the glue-up and nailing the sides to the shelves they were very rigid. They were a little out-of-square and I had planned to square them up before nailing on the back. But it felt like it would be too big a fight (and I was running out of time.) Then after nailing the back boards to the sides and shelves the case felt totally rigid.

Here are a few random bits that I might want to remember when I build them again.

Used 6d clout nails on the sides and 4d clout nails for the ship-lapped back

Put 2 nails in each end of the top rail and kick

Did not nail the back boards to the top rail

Made the outside back boards full-height, and nailed them on the outside of the sides and shelves, not inset as the plans specify. This worked well and made the case a little wider than if the back was inset

The main glue-up was tough – not sure how much worse because of cupped shelf boards. Would rather just glue and nail the sides to the shelves all at once, then use clamps to adjust squareness if needed

Height open above each shelf was 13″, 11″, and 9″. This seemed like a good size for use at college.

The depth achieved by using 1x12s seemed plenty. The plan in ADB calls for wider boards, but I don’t think I’d want the case that deep.

Power sanding is totally gross. Maybe it’s just that the dust collection on my random-orbit sander is lame. Regardless, I should shoot for never doing that in the house again

My old Jet “lunch box” planer is a rock star. Turned the cupped 3/4″ boards into 1/2″ back boards and went straight from the planer to plowing the rabbets for ship-lapping, and nailed them onto the case.

I’ve been tuning up some large mortise and tenon joints lately. It’s probably the dry February air, but I was having a heck of a time with the handle of the 3/4″ chisel staying in it’s socket. In his post here Chris Schwarz recommended hair spray to help hold on a socketed chisel handle. When I asked around the other night for hair spray, we were fresh out. So I tried some spray shellac. The handle hasn’t moved since.

Quick little wall shelves in pine, cut nails, and finished with shellac. The dados were fun – it was the first time I’d cut them with a back saw, chisel, and router plane. Lesson learned from this project: put the French cleats inside the box, not on the back/outside of it.

I caught up with Jim Van Hoven recently when he held an open house at his shop in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. He has a nice setup in a building that used to be a restaurant. From back to front he has a machine room, then a (work)bench room, and the showroom with big windows looking out onto Main Street.

While I was there I took photos of the adze I used when I took the class with Jim in 2010. The handle is straight and shorter than I remembered. Jim said he really likes how it has an asymmetrical shape. Seen best in the third adze photo below, it has a steeper sweep on the left side and shallower sweep on the right.

As if those things weren’t enough to make this a unique tool, Jim’s adze has neither an external or internal bevel. It has a knife edge with the bevel going up about an inch-and-a-half on both sides. There’s no chance of finding an adze like this at retail outlets.